The Bill Simmons Podcast - Kyler Murray–vs.–Josh Rosen; RIP, Luke Perry; and the Last 'Sopranos' Episode With Robert Mays and Alan Sepinwall | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode Date: March 6, 2019

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Robert Mays to discuss Kyler Murray, the Arizona Cardinals, and what could happen to Josh Rosen, as well as Le'Veon Bell's possible landing spots (12:45). Then Bill talks to Rolling Stone's Alan Sepinwall, author of 'The Sopranos Sessions,' about Luke Perry, 'Beverly Hills 90210,' revisiting the 'Sopranos' ending, and more (54:43). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the Bill Simmons podcast from a rainy Los Angeles. I'm the ringer. Podcast Network is brought to you as always by ZipRecruiter. You know what's smart? Not questioning Bill Belichick, Kyle. I know. I know. It gets hard though.

We're not franchising Trey Flowers. I know. It hurts my feelings, but it's smart not to question them. We've won six Super Bowls. You know what else isn't smart? Or you know what else is smart? Going to ziprecruiter.com slash BS to hire the right people for your business. Their technology identifies people with the right skills for

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Everything ships easily, so there are never any awkward meetups. You can find Mercari in the app stores. Check it out at Mercari.com. That's Mercari, M-E-R-C-A-R-I. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. If you like Trey Young and if you enjoy watching the Atlanta Hawks,

check out Winging It with Vince Carter, Kent Bazemore, Andy Finberg, because they talked to Trey Young and John Collins after All-Star weekend. That's become the Sacramento Kings and Atlanta Hawks in a heated battle for who's the most fun league pass team right now. I enjoy both of those teams. Check them out on the Ringer Podcast Network. Check out the Ringer where we have a bunch of great stuff right now, including Danny Kelly's just epic NFL draft guide. It's like over 12,000 words. It's really great.

Riley McAtee broke down the Game of Thrones trailer exhaustively on our site yesterday. And you would have thought to yourself, well, how can you top that? Well, here's how we topped it. Mallory and Jason from Binge Mode, they broke it down with a video that is over an hour long. It's 62 minutes, Kyle.

And with the trailer, 60 seconds. It's a short trailer. They spent 62 minutes breaking down basically every image in the trailer. It might be the most insane piece of content we've ever published,

either at The Ringer or at Grantland. I was just in awe of it. There's deep dives and then this is like the abyss. Just incredible stuff by them. So if you love Game of Thrones, check that out on our YouTube channel, which has over 100,000 subscribers.

It's like at 103 now, we get like a silver button. Where's my silver button, YouTube? Send us a button. Coming up, we're going to talk to the ringers Robert Mays who I've known for this entire decade I'm going to try to get him emotional during the pod don't tell him we're going to talk about all the comings and goings

that are about to happen in the NFL right now and then Alan Sepulow is going to come on we're going to talk about Luke Perry who tragically passed away at age 52 and we're going to talk about Dylan McKay and what he meant to the 90s. Luke Perry, did he get his just due? All that stuff.

And then we're also going to talk about The Sopranos series finale, because I finished it two weeks ago and he wrote the book about The Sopranos. That's all coming up first. Our friends from Pearl Jam. All right. We're going to talk football in one second. I want to say something quickly. I meant to do it on my last podcast, but it seems it makes more sense to do it on this one.

So Richard Plepler announced that he was leaving HBO on Friday. He was the chief executive officer of HBO. He basically ran the place. 2015, after I left ESPN, I think like 10 or 11 days later, I had dinner with him and Michael Lombardo, who was also there at the time. And they were trying to convince me to come to HBO. And the big selling point for them was, this is a place for creative people. We help them realize their vision. We help creative people create. And that's been the selling point that they've had basically for, I don't know, the last three of years, the biggest piece of that. He is somebody that creators love because he puts them in position to succeed.

He is very big on the whole concept of family. And he always says the word family. And you're in the family and you're part of our family. He created a place that didn't feel like a network. It actually did feel like a family. And if, you know, though, though I've been at HBO now for three and a half years in various ways, and it's always striking to me how many people at HBO have been at HBO for a long time. You know, you meet somebody who's, they've been there 20 years, 18 years, 25 years, 27

years. And I think that's one of the things that makes the place special. You know, for me, I went there to do a bunch of things. Um, one of which was to create this talk show that didn't work. And you know, we rushed it. We did, we made a million mistakes with it. We rushed it. The idea wasn't right yet. It's, it should have been monthly. There's a million things I would do over again. It happens. I learned a lot from it. Um, and sometimes it's the way it goes when it, when it ended, I just assumed that was it for me and HBO. And it was the opposite. Richard, um, was adamant about, you know, I think we had lunch shortly after and he was just like, look, you know, when we made a commitment to you, it was because we wanted to work with you and we wanted to do stuff with you. And it was a long-term commitment.

It wasn't just the show. Like we, this is what we do. We want to work with creators. We want to work with the best people. And we feel like you're one of the best people. We want, we want to keep doing stuff with you. And I was relatively shocked because I just felt like I let them down. The show didn't work, all that stuff.

And it was just really cool. And I think it speaks to the kind of guy that he is and the kind of leader that he is, that they make commitments to people. They put a lot of thought into them. They put a lot of thought into what they want HBO to be. And what it is, is a place that they want to work with the best. They don't do a ton of stuff.

And Richard would always talk about how they curate excellence and how they don't want viewers slash HBO fans to have no idea whether when they click on something, whether it's good or not, that if it's on HBO for the most part, there's an understanding that they put a ton of time and thought and energy into why this is on HBO and how this fits into the other things they're doing. And that's the biggest reason HBO has been

such an incredible success machine these last three decades and beyond that, obviously, but especially like really since Larry Sanders show on where it's just like the place that people wanted to work. If you created TV shows, a really hard thing to do. It's a mindset. It is, you have to have taste. You have to have a real belief in trusting creative people. And if you hire somebody, you're hiring their vision,

the way they think about things, you try not to tinker with it. So that's the biggest reason they've been successful. And if you talk to basically anybody who has done anything that's been super successful at HBO, they will always talk about the culture, what it means to have somebody looking out for you, what it means to be nudged in the right directions. And then HBO's incredible ability to create awareness for something that's good, which is something that I experienced firsthand

last year when we did Andre the Giant. We knew it was good. HBO realized it was really good pretty quickly and mobilized behind it and raised awareness for it in a way that I had just never seen before. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe how many people knew that documentary was coming. And more importantly, because HBO was making a big deal that this was coming,

that made people kind of trust that they should spend an hour and a half watching it. And I think that's a really hard place to get to. And that was part of the culture that Richard created and sustained. So when I read the stories about how he was leaving, obviously I had a feeling it was probably headed that way. I didn't know if it was gonna be that soon. But I don't know where HBO is going. This is such a crazy time with the media landscape where, you know, Netflix is just completely blown up the model of how people think about TV. They had 650 shows last year or something. Um, they're spending $8 billion a year on content and at the streaming and all this stuff. And the fact that people watch television shows where they don't even have time slots anymore for, if you're under 25, you just watch it. You press a button and

it's playing. You don't think about it. It comes on at eight o'clock, nine o'clock, 10 o'clock. Thrones is going to be the last show that people even think like that. So where people fit in, in this landscape, how people consume content, how people watch TV, all that stuff is going to be really complicated over these next 10 years. And I think HBO's biggest advantage, other than the culture that I think Richard and some others created, was that they curated excellence and they won the trust of people that subscribed to HBO and watched it. And that was, you know, when stuff didn't work,

it felt was surprising because it was like, wow, HBO backed this and it wasn't that good. I can't believe it. Like you'd almost be shocked by it. I'll be really interested to see if they can keep that. I think Richard was a big part of why it stayed that way and why HBO was regarded that way. And I don't think it's something that you just move people around. It's not, this isn't like an NBA team or an NFL team where you just change the coach and it's the same thing. I think that to me, this is like, if Popovich leaves the Spurs, are the Spurs going to be the same? Maybe, but I don't know. So I look at all

this stuff and I read everything. I'm an optimistic guy by nature. I think HBO still has some incredible people in place. Casey Boyce, who's running programming now, is honestly one of the smartest people I've ever worked with in my entire life. And I say that not in an ask Casey way. He's just really smart. They have really smart people still at HBO.

And I really hope that they maintain the culture that they've created over the last three years, that it still means something that when something is on HBO, that it still is going to resonate. And the decision to put something on HBO still matters. I hope that's how it stays. And I think it would be cool if it was the case and that this was just a blip. I think Richard, you know, he's still young enough. Whatever his next job is going to be, it's going to be awesome. I think he has at least one more great act in him wherever he goes. But he's a guy that meant a lot to me professionally.

And, you know, it's just weird to read the stories, but I never really heard from that many people who actually crossed paths with them and worked with them. And he really was that great. He was just a great leader. And one of those guys, I've even said this to him, it almost felt like an actor was playing him the whole time. Like he really was one of a kind, like always impeccably dressed, just felt like a boss.

And that's why wherever he goes next, it'll be the same thing. Some people just have that a boss. And that's why wherever he goes next, it'll be the same thing. Some people just have that extra something and I feel like he has it and I'm going to miss working with him. So that's it. I just wanted to say that. All right, we're going to call Robert Mays right now.

All right, on the line right now, a man that I've known for this entire decade. I said beforehand, I was going to try to make you cry during the podcast. I don't know. It's like I have 50-50 chance. I was actually going through pictures, found some classics from 2010, 2011. I've known this man for a long time, Robert Mace. How are you? It's crazy that it's been the entire decade. I'm also terrified of what those pictures look like.

I'm a much slimmer man now than I was in those days. Yeah. There's a couple of good ones. That's all right, man. We all had our stages. NFL really heating up right now. We are heading, this is, it's weird. The NFL's kind of figured out how to own this little stretch of time right now, right before like March Madness kicks in. It's after All-Star Weekend.

And all of a sudden for about two weeks, it feels like everybody cares where everybody's going. What do you think is the number one storyline right now? I think it's Kyler Murray. I think it's Kyler Murray just because it's happened so fast. The Antonio Brown thing, I feel like the new cycle of that is already nearing its tail end. The Steelers came out and said it was going to be settled by Friday. So it feels like we've had a lot of time to process the idea that Antonio Brown was going to be on a different team. Yeah.

I mean, it feels like we're only in day five or six of the notion that Kyler Murray could be the number one pick in the draft and a Cardinals team that drafted a guy in the top 10 last year might be willing to move on from him. I'm still in the process of kind of reconciling and processing that. Do you agree with that? Yes. I feel like if you believe Kyler Murray is the guy, then you should move on from Josh Rosen. Yeah. I don't know if it's going to happen for a bunch of different reasons. If you're Steve Kime, the GM of the Cardinals, that's a really tough thing to admit 11 months

later that you screwed up your top 10 pick so badly that you're going to have to deal that guy and spend another pick, another quality pick, another high pick on a quarterback. That's really hard to sell. But if you can sell your owner on that, if you can say with Kingsbury, with being able to get a two or three for Rosen, we feel like there's no reason to chase bad decisions with other bad decisions. So just to commemorate this GM of the Cardinals who had one of the most amazing years,

I think, of any sports executive, he hired a coach that he then fired within a 16-game season. He traded up. Didn't he trade up for Josh Rosen to draft Josh Rosen, who then he is moving off of after a year so he can spend the number one pick in the draft, which they earned because of all his terrible decisions and for the fact that they created one of the worst cultures in recent memory. And now they're going to put Kyler Murray in it with this coach who had a losing record at Texas Tech.

It all sounds great. If I was a Cardinals fan, I would be going nuts. I'm like, hey, here's an idea. Why don't we trade you, GM moron who put us in all of these bad situations? Maybe you should be the one that leaves. It all unraveled very quickly for them. Because if you look back at the 2015 season,

I mean, Carson Palmer is a borderline MVP candidate that year. If Cam you look back at the 2015 season, I mean, Carson Palmer is a borderline MVP candidate that year. If Cam Newton didn't win it that year, Carson Palmer would have. That team is a game away from the Super Bowl. And then the 2016 season happens.

Palmer gets hurt. Arians retires. It all unraveled very fast. And they didn't really have a plan in place because they're trying to win right now in 2015 and 2016. And they mortgaged their future in a pretty bad way. They had no other, they had no receivers.

They had no offensive linemen, the offensive lineman they did have got hurt. So it just really, it's hard to kind of comprehend how many things went as badly as possible for them in a very short period of time. And the Wilks thing, I know it looks bad to fire an African-American coach one year into his tenure and hire a guy who is sub 500 at Texas Tech. But I also understand how it happens in the NFL right now. The quickest way and the most consistent way to success is to have an offensive-minded head coach that's also your play caller. I mean, Les Snead said it at the Combine last week. They were asking him, how are you going to deal with losing all of these assistants? And he was kind of like, what do you mean? It doesn't matter. Sean McVay is the offensive coordinator. Yeah. And

I understand why you would go back on a decision to try to get the most you possibly can out of your quarterback. The problem now is it seems like they're about to jettison that quarterback. Yeah. And he's somebody that I changed my mind on 11 times last season. And I can't even remember where I landed. I can't remember if I think he's going to be good or not. There were times when he seemed pretty poised and at least a little bit in the Rodgers phylum. And by the end of the season,

it just was unclear whether his confidence was gone, their offensive line was awful, et cetera, et cetera. I would be, if you could get him for a second round pick with the contract that he's under, to me, that's a no brainer. I'd actually be shocked if that was all it took. You really think it's just second or third round pick for him? That's what Kurt, where Peter King reported last week.

If it's a third round pick, I'm not exaggerating here. I think every team in the NFL should consider doing this because you'd, you'd spend a third round pick on your backup quarterback, right? That's what you would use a third round pick for your backup quarterback. So if you're, that's the price you have in mind for that position and you can make Josh Rosen nominally your backup quarterback on his contract. Think about that. And didn't they pay, Didn't they pay some of it already? It's actually less money than it should be. Yeah. Yes. The signing bonus. So all you're on the hook for, I believe, are the base salaries and the roster bonuses. So you're looking at the most

$3 million in the final year of that deal. Chase Daniel makes $6 million for the Bears right now. So with that in mind, if you're the Chargers, if you're the Steelers, if you're the Patriots, all of these teams that need a future at quarterback and don't really want to spend a ton of draft capital to find it, this is a really good move. And for a team like Washington that is so desperately in need of both a future answer at quarterback and a cheap answer at quarterback, considering it's paying Alex Smith $20 million. I feel like they have to be the team that's willing to give up maybe a little bit more, at least the second round pick, because they are more desperate than any other team at quarterback right now.

Hold on. Let me check with nephew Kyle, who watched more than a couple of Cardinals games on season ticket with me. He used to be in the seat that he sat in, Mays, before you left us. Kyle. What's the time mark? Six minutes and 46 seconds. While you left. It was a stupid move. I stand by thinking it was dumb.

Number 56 pick for Josh Rosen. Would you sign up for that right now, Kyle? Yes. We have 12 picks. Yes, definitely. Yes, I would. I think I would too. I mean, he might actually be good.

Are we going to get somebody better than him as a quarterback prospect at pick 56? I would do that right now. You wouldn't. And I understand he looked terrible last year, but I stand by the idea that it's impossible to evaluate him based on what they were.

They fired their offensive coordinator like five games into the season. They had no offensive line. They had no receivers. They had the worst line in the league. Yes, by far. It's not out of the question to say it's the worst set of circumstances a highly drafted rookie quarterback has been dropped into in recent memory. And that includes Jared golf with Jeff Fisher and Mitchell Trubisky with John Fox.

It's saying a lot. Yeah, that is true. There's been some bad situations. The best part of it would be the ringer ringer ripples. Natalie Rubin, the Pats having a Jewish quarterback would be one of the funniest subplots of all time because it is not in her to root against Josh Rosen. She would just never be able to do it, but she hates the Patriots like they're Al Qaeda. And that combo would just be that combined with Game of Thrones coming up. I really think we'd have to put her in like a mental hospital for like a week just to

like unwind. It would be unbelievable. I can't wait. And just the loot, the looming like Lamar Jackson existential crisis that she's going to go through this fall. Yeah. Oh my God. The Ravens. They're like, they're like a little league parents tell,

tell themselves it's all right. After the Lamar Jackson, but well, he was really good in the fourth quarter. He really, he got, he got his legs. It was like,

Hey, you guys were down 20. I still like Lamar for at least another year. I still like Lamar. I have to commit to it for at least another year. I still like Lamar. We'll see how it goes. I have my concerns. The other team, if we're talking about it from the Jewish quarterback perspective, that absolutely should be in on this and won't because they never make a smart decision anymore,

is the Giants. Oh, my God. In a way, if they were to deal like a second round pick for Josh Rosen, it would almost rectify the terrible decision they made last year to just forego quarterback and ride with Eli again. So they have the 37th pick. The Patriots have 32, which is the last pick in the first round because we won the Super Bowl again, Mace. I don't know if you realized.

Were you there? Oh, yeah. I was there. I was at the game. We won the Super Bowl again. So when you win the Super Bowl, you don't remember this because the Bears haven't won in your lifetime. When you win the Super Bowl, you get the last pick of the draft. That's how it works out. That sounds wonderful. So we have the 32nd pick. It does feel like the Giants just giving 37 for Josh Rosen right now would have a 100% approval rating with their fan base. It's just a good trade. I absolutely think it would. Because then you get to spend your

top 10 pick on a top 10 player. That's why I believe that so many teams should be considering this because if you're a team that needs a rookie quarterback, the only thing that you're not getting with if you trade for Josh Rosen is that first year of that rookie contract. And I almost think that because you don't have to hand out the signing bonus, that makes it worth it. So what's the difference? And then I think of all the sports, this is the single most important thing to roll the dice with, because if the guy's actually pretty good, would he have three more this year and two more after? On that contract? Or is it five? Is it four or five?

It's a five. You have the fifth year option. Right. Even if it's, let's say it's a coin flip. Let's say it's a 50% chance that he can become an above average starting quarterback. And you're paying him that contract, which is zero and zip.

It's nothing like, how did the Patriots not roll the dice with that? Unless they just scouted him and decided that guy sucks. There's just no way it's happening. But I, it's possible. I just felt like he, too many people who watch college football said that he had too many moments that were positive

for him to just be a complete bust in the NFL. He was playing these high profile games for UCLA. And I don't know. I just, I refuse to believe he's going to be a bust. I actually liked the way he carried himself the first part of the year before his line fell apart on him. I thought he, there was a poise to him that I kind of liked. There are two things I feel like we have to take into consideration here. One is that something Dan Orlovsky pointed out on Twitter that I thought was very smart beyond all the turnover in Arizona last year, he had a bunch of different offensive coordinators in college.

Yeah. And when he was at UCLA, he had to deal with all of this inconsistency. And two, I feel like you have to wonder something. I talked to the old Rams quarterbacks coach about this his first year when he got there with McVay about golf. And they said that they thought seven games was the perfect amount of starts for golf

as a rookie with Jeff Fisher because it got him introduced to the league, but it didn't develop scar tissue. They can still kind of make him the quarterback they wanted to. So your concern with Rosen is we know the circumstances were terrible, but were they so terrible that it's left lasting damage that it's going to be hard to get over? I think there's so many things you have to take into consideration with him. But if you're the Giants, right, you have the sixth pick it. There's a good chance that the top two quarterbacks, whether it's Murray or Haskins or something, will good chance that the top two quarterbacks whether it's murray or haskins or something will be taken in the top three that's just how it seems to go every single year so you

would have to trade up to get one of those top two quarterbacks if you sit there at six and you draft you trade for josh rosen you won't have to move up and give away future picks and you can use your pick at number six i just think that a smart team is going to realize that the chances of Josh Rosen succeeding are as high or higher than they are for every quarterback outside the top two in this draft. And it's worth going after him with a much, much lower pick. Plus, if you're the Giants, he's the only QB out there who has less muscle tone than Eli. See of that. Oh, I don't know, man. There are a few guys that can give you a run for your money there. Jared Goff is 100% in that conversation. Jared Goff. Ben Roethlisberger is right there. Trust me, that list is longer than you think. By the way, I think that works

out great for the Giants. And now I hope it doesn't happen because I hate the Giants and I'll never forgive any of their fans for all the shit they talked after my two Super Bowl losses. Do you think Kyler Murray is good enough to be the first pick? Do you sign off on that concept? Yes. Okay. Russell Wilson 2.0? I think they're different players. I mean, I think that Kyler Murray has such a strong arm. Russell Wilson does too. But I think that Murray gives you everything you want. He's accurate. I mean, his numbers are comparable to Baker Mayfield's when you just look at the completion percentage and everything he did in college. The system is very similar, obviously. I think Baker is on a completely different level as a prospect. But I feel like if you just look at the pure talent and production and results from Murray, there's not a huge argument as to

why he shouldn't be the first overall pick in the draft. Well, I was against it if he was 5'8", but those two extra inches really did it for me. 5'10 is doable. I don't feel like 5'8 is doable. That's what it's all about. Yeah. Can you get over that bar? That's what the combine is from a measurements perspective. As long as you're clearing these kind of hurdles and checking the boxes, that's all you need to do. It doesn't matter if he's six foot, but as long as he's not five, eight, one 60, then we're good to go. Right. And he's not. So, uh, and it would also be really fun. And, you know, if you're Arizona and you've just had one of the biggest organizational shit shows of the last 12

months that anybody's had, like at least he's exciting. You get it, you know, you get another pick for Rosen. I can't believe he's not a worth of worth of first round pick. I'm just stunned by that. Doesn't anybody understand football? And like the fact that if you, you can put any rookie in the worst possible situation and they're going to look bad. Like that's just what football is. The Patriots had, I, Jim Plunkett was my first favorite quarterback in the early 70s. My first favorite Patriots team was like 73, 74, that range. And Plunkett was the first overall pick. Can't miss. No way this guy wasn't going to be great. And they just put a bunch of shady teams around him. And by like 1975, he was a shell of himself and they traded him to San Francisco. And then he was out of the league and then famously was resurrected by Al Davis and won a Super Bowl.

But I think that's the all-time—you talked about scar tissue. That dude had more scar tissue than probably any QB ever, just mental. So I think we always discount, if you put a bad offensive line and bad coaches around a young quarterback, it's going to go terribly. How does it not go terribly? It's impossible. That's what this is all about. I mean, the list of quarterbacks that can transcend their surroundings and be good no matter what, I don't even know how long that list is. It might be like one guy long and it was Aaron Rodgers like five years ago. That's just not realistic.

Everybody needs a little bit of help at the very least, and he had none. I understand he looks really bad, but I'd still be taking a chance on him. That third round pick thing, that's not my belief. I would give up more than that for him. Let's think about how much it costs to get Sam Bradford from the Eagles a couple

years ago. Right. That's also something to consider with this. The price for a quarterback on the trade market, even for a guy like Rosen, who's a top 10 pick, it's going to shift depending on how desperate teams get and what the demand is. Right now, most teams are set at quarterback. But if we get to August and somebody goes down with a devastating injury like Teddy Bridgewater did, that's how the market shifts. So if you're Arizona, do you just say, we're hanging on to both of them and we're going to wait to see what sort of trade market develops for Rosen? I don't know the answer to that because you're also sacrificing leverage because people know

you need to trade him. So there's a lot of different moving parts here. Yeah. And if you go through all the teams from like 17 on in the first round, it's not really realistic except for the Steelers. And if they traded their first round pick for a quarterback, I don't think Roethlisberger would handle that well. On top of all that. Oh, really? You don't think so? No, that would be my expert opinion. And then you just go on down the line. It's,

I don't know who else would, you you know maybe oakland they have those three picks and if they decided they're just going to move on from car do whatever and you know put right i don't really see them doing that and then all of a sudden we're out of the first round everybody else has a quarterback um that the jags at 38 maybe tampa 39 the jags if the Jags signed Foles then it's a done deal I don't think they'd give up more draft capital

for a quarterback they're on a pretty short term schedule right now you know it's a bad idea spending 20 million a year on Nick Foles I still don't understand

that out there it's just like they just need competency a quarterback they don't need like an overwhelmingly

good performance and Foles on a cheap deal makes sense, but paying Foles market good starting quarterback value on that team? I don't see it. I'd rather have Case Keenum for like $3 million a year.

The problem with Jacksonville is their timeline because if you look at a lot of the contracts they've signed and you just consider the financial realities of that team, that core is going to not stay together for very long. In order to sign Foles, they essentially have to cut Malik Jackson and do some other cap gymnastics to even do it. So this kind of world-beating defense

that we're used to in Jacksonville is already falling apart because of the financial concerns that they have to worry about with Foles. So I feel like with them, yes, we could draft a quarterback at seven. Yes, we can maybe trade up for one. But how long does that guy take to worry about with Foles. So I feel like with them, yes, we could draft a quarterback at seven. Yes, we can maybe trade up for one. But how long does that guy take to develop?

How much of our team is in place while that's happening? I don't agree with that line of thinking, but I'm assuming that's why they're motivated to fix it right now. And like Tampa is another one that I wonder what they're going to do. They can't possibly run it back with Jameis. I don't understand that one either.

They have the seventh pick and they have the 39th pick. That's another team that should be thinking about Rosen. Seven's obviously too high, but 39 is right in the range. I don't know. I don't know what... The teams, the way they mis-evaluate QBs is really consistently unbelievable to me. Like Denver signing Flacco was just incredible for me.

I thought it was like an onion article. It's unbelievable. I was like, are you serious? It's unbelievable. Oh my God. Really? This is your move? It's my favorite thing.

The one just idea we can rely on in professional football is John Elway looking at a 6'6 quarterback and being like, that's my guy. Let's do this. He's so tall. It's amazing. Elway looking at a six, six quarterback and being like, that's my guy. Let's do this. He's so tall. It's amazing. It's, it's, we have these, like these jokes kind of pop up around certain decision makers. Like so-and-so loves this kind of player. And it's always a little bit exaggerated. You know, it's a parody of itself in a way, John Elway, this is not a joke. He wanted to sign

Brock Osweiler. He drafted Paxton Lynch, both of whom are six, seven and are way too tall to play quarterback of the NFL. And then went out of his way to go get Joe Flacco, who no one wants. Everything about it is amazing. I wish I had like a, like a type that people like for hiring for the ringer that people made fun of me for. Like if I, if I really love six foot six editors, it was like somebody slate just laid some people off. There's a six foot six editor available. If I really love 6'6 editors, it was like somebody just laid some people off. There's a 6'6 editor available and I'm like, oh, let's get him.

He sounds great. You're like Belichick. You're breaking tendencies. He'll be so tall and intimidating at the computer. John Elway. Come on, John Elway. He can see over the line under center. That's the most important thing. I want to talk about Le'Veon Bell, but let's take a break.

We're going to take a break to talk about Hulu Plus. Here's the thing about being a Boston sports fan this century. With 11 titles and counting, 12 titles? I think we have 12. It just completely ruins you as a sports fan. Suddenly you expect a title every year, or in my case, every couple of months. That's the funny thing about better. Once you've experienced it, you can't go back. That's the gist of better. Once you've experienced it, you can't go back. That's the gist of that Hulu commercial I've been seeing everywhere. It's all about how Hulu has tons of shows and movies, exclusive originals like The Handmaid's Tale, plus live TV for sports. And that, once you get Hulu, it's going to ruin TV for you forever. So start your free Hulu trial today at Hulu.com, H-U-L-U, Hulu. com. Live TV plan required for live content. Restrictions apply. All right. So Le'Veon Bell took a year off from playing football to create a situation where he

was going to be a marquee free agent in a league where nobody wants to spend more than 10 bucks an hour on a running back. Did you agree with this decision? Everything about it was wrong. Everything about it was misguided. And especially when he sees the market and how it's going to unfold right now, walking away from $14 million last year was not a smart idea. I just don't know.

We went over this a lot at the combine. We're sitting at dinners and just kind of going through every single team that we thought might be interested in signing him. And you just can't come up with very many. It's really hard to find a list of five teams that realistically would want him. I'm trying to think of anyone in my lifetime who held out and missed an entire year and it worked out. Because I remember when I was a kid, I used to love Gus Williams on Seattle. And they won the title, I think in 79. He was this point

guard who was just kind of this new school point guards, athletic. He was kind of balding. He could dunk, he could shoot. He was great. And in like 1982, he just held out and he wanted like 900,000 a year. And they wanted to, the Seattle wanted to pay 500 and went back and forth. And just, he missed the whole year and then ended up signing a deal and he got traded to Washington and never made the money back. And I was like 13. I'm like, what is this guy doing? He just gave this money away for no reason. And I've just never really seen it work. Missing the whole year. If there's some example that I'm missing, please feel free to email us at the mailbag at theringer.com. But it's just money you're never getting back.

It doesn't work. And on top of it, he really doesn't seem to have any suitors. Your guess would be the Jets or would you rule out the Colts? The Colts, absolutely not. Chris Ballard is way too smart to give Le'Veon Bell a bunch of money. It doesn't matter that they have all that space. So if we're ruling out the Colts, just because I don't feel like their GM would

ever do it. And the Jets have said they don't want to. I mean, that report has kind of come out that they want some cheaper guys. That was the team I'd always just penciled it in. It's like they have so much space. They have a need at running back. They don't have a history of making really prudent decisions. Their GM is definitely backed up

against the wall. But if they're not going to do it, then I think it gets really bad really fast. So you don't even have like a dark horse candidate? The Bucks are my dark horse candidate. Oh, okay. They don't have that much cap space, but they have some cuts to make if they want to. Here's the thing.

Pretty much every single one of these teams can sign whatever players they want. I mean, almost anyone can come up with the space to get a player under the cap. Remember a couple of years ago when the Saints were like $2 million over the cap and then signed Jairus Bird, it's like a $15 million safety or safety contract. It doesn't matter. Most of these teams can figure out how to make this happen. I mean, you look at the Bucks, they can cut Cameron Braid, they can cut William Golston, they can cut so many guys and just free up space. Jason Pierre-Paul, if they want to, they can, so many teams can just convert site or a base salary money into

signing bonus money in order to free up space immediately. It's all possible. And with the Bucs, it's kind of the same sort of stuff, right? One of the reasons I don't think they're that they wouldn't be keen to spend draft capital on a new quarterback is because their GM is kind of up against the wall. They need to win right now.

And I think that's Le'Veon Bell is the type of move that it's splashy. You could argue that we're just trying to win football games. Some team that's not smart is going to do this.

I just don't know which not smart team it is. It's funny. The biggest thing that's or one of the biggest things that's not smart is going to do this. I just don't know which not smart team it is. It's funny. The biggest thing that's, or one of the biggest things that's changed for following sports as I stare down 50 in September is the flashy move. Teams are now smart enough to realize that that's stupid.

Because there was this, we're talking decades of somebody would sign Le'Veon Bell and the fans who actually knew anything would be like, wow, that's stupid. Why'd we do that? But the team cared about the flashiness of it. And that was really like,

that was the Red Sox for 15 years of my life. I feel like teams don't think that way anymore. They finally at least wisened up enough to know that it's not good to try to win this newspaper headline thing for 24 hours or this, I guess, internet headline thing for 24 hours. Ultimately, you really can't think that way. And I don't think anybody is thinking that way anymore. So I look at Le'Veon Bell, I'm like- Oh, I don't know about that.

When Antonio Brown gets traded to the Redskins tomorrow, I think you're going to regret this. No, no, no. The Redskins and Raiders don't count. I'm not counting them as real franchises. No, I'm not. John Gruden and Daniel Snyder are immune. I was talking about normal sports franchises.

All right. That's totally fine. Yeah. Now the Redskins, I mean, this is the Albert Hainsworth signing, right? Hey, we got Albert Hainsworth. Yeah. And the Redskins fans are like, wait, what? Why is that a real number? Why do we do that? The Redskins have $17 million in cap space and their pay, they don't have a quarterback at all. And I guarantee you, they're going to be the team that just comes away with Antonio Brown

for $12 million by the end of the week. It's going to be incredible. I'm going to love every second of it. Well, that would suck for me and House because we bet initially on the 49ers at like plus 400 and then we put in another bet on the Raiders a couple days ago at plus 350. So you think that you think the Raiders doing

it? I mean, it's the Redskins and the Raiders. I think the two teams that are most apt to do it for the reasons that you just said. Well, the Raiders have the combination of just a shitload of picks and you know, need some sort of narrative that isn't

just they've gutted the entire team and now here are some new guys. It makes sense. Yeah, it makes sense. The most fun scenario for me would be if San Francisco somehow signed Le'Veon Bell to a Revis contract for like one year, 20 million, and then traded for Antonio Brown

and basically just put together the Steelers in San Francisco. That would be fun. I'd vote for that. The problem is the 49ers handed Jarek McKinnon a contract last offseason that made absolutely no sense, and they owe him most of the money from that. It's hard to picture them in the Le'Veon Bell sweepstakes. They paid Jarek McKinnon four years,

$30 million, and $6 million of that is still dead money if they cut him right now. I would assume that Jarek McKinnon will be back. The Patriots didn't franchise tag Trey Flowers and if we hadn't won six Super Bowls and I didn't trust Belichick completely,

I would have been bummed out about it. Should I be bummed out anyway that they didn't franchise tag Trey Fowler? Because it seems like that's just the easiest thing to do is just you lock somebody in for one year and no long-term commitments. That's a really big number to hand out to one position. And I know Belichick hates to do it

especially at edge rusher he never values that spot when it comes to spending a ton of money on those guys think about how many players he's traded or just let go chandler jones richard seymour they didn't franchise tag flowers we'll see if he's back but if you're gonna pay that guy upwards of 20 million dollars for one season i think Belichick would rather say, I'll take the comp pick next year and we'll move on. He does it all the time. And this is not an exception to that. Yeah, that's exactly what

he's going to do. And it's logical. It's just going to be a bummer when we don't have a pass rush in week six and everybody's talking about, I wish we had Trey Flowers and then we'll win the Super Bowl again. It'll be fine. But think about what happened in the Super Bowl. It had nothing to do with Trey Flowers making plays off the edge.

It's guys like Adrian Claiborne and Dante Hightower and just dudes that are all built the exact same way. They're like 6'3", 280 and they can just move all around the line. That's what the pass rush is for the Patriots. That's why they're not prone

to valuing guys at that spot because they feel like they can manufacture one when they need it. I want you to admit to everybody that that was actually for a football nerd like yourself, and you're way up there in the football nerds that I know, that that was actually a secretly enjoyable Super Bowl. Just admit it. I've said that it was interesting, but not exciting. That's how I've described it. Great strategy. It was not exciting. Great strategy though. A lot of stuff going on. Going back and watching the game

was fascinating, but being at the game was miserable. I mean, I think both of those things can be true. How about when the Pats, when they ran the big lineup in the fourth quarter but then spread everybody out and they had fucking fullback in the wide receiver, deep threat spot and tight ends. They do that all the time.

You love that. You loved it. Yes, I do. I absolutely love that. Okay. Trust me. There are a lot of cool things to take from that game. It was very fun to analyze, but it was not fun to watch in the building.

There was no energy in that place for four hours. You know what's one of the most fun things to take from that game that really hasn't gotten enough momentum, in my opinion? Just an epic, epic, epic shit show from Sean McVay. It's amazing we even talk about him as a wonder boy anymore. That was one of the worst coaching performances

I've ever seen in a big game. Certainly one of the worst ever against the Patriots where they just did the same thing the whole game. They ran no kitchen sink stuff. They never ran their running backs. Our one weakness the whole year, which I kept talking about on the podcast, was wheel routes and delayed screens and screens

and just running backs in space against our linebackers was the death of the Patriots. They never did it. And I'm still in disbelief. I've watched the game three times. I'm just in disbelief. I don't know what their game plan was. It was bizarre.

I have no explanation for it. I don't know if we'll ever have an explanation for Gurley and just the lack of usage, not from a running perspective, but just mushing him into the slot and making Dante Hightower cover him. I still will never understand how that didn't happen. Outside of that, though, there are guys open in that game. And the problem was golf was just swimming.

He was swimming the entire game. He was just treading water. Belichick knew exactly how to confuse him early in downs and not allow him to get rid of the ball. And the pass rush got home. He just is not a quick decision maker when not everything is defined. And because New England was doing so many different things on defense and mixing up coverages, he just didn't know what was coming.

He never had a feel for what was about to happen. And that's why you just see him patting the ball. That's why he's a second late on that supposed touchdown throw to Brandon cooks that should have happened. And so many moments in that game where you can just see his lack of ability to anticipate and to process information quickly, just doomed them. And that was the biggest problem. I thought McVay was fine. It wasn't good. There were mistakes, but I feel like the, just the shortcomings of quarterback are ultimately going to doom you against the Patriots the same way we've seen pretty much every single

year, whether it's the AFC championship game with Portals or the Super Bowl with golf. If you are not good enough at that position, they're going to take advantage of you in the biggest moments period. If Todd Gurley was actually healthy for that game, that's one of the most embarrassing coaching games I've ever seen.

I have no idea if he was healthy or not. I just have to believe he wasn't. Why haven't they had the surgery yet? Why haven't they fixed his meniscus? The report came out this week that it's arthritic. He has an arthritic knee. That was the report that came out this week.

So if that's true, it helps explain some things. I mean, that's a disaster because they just gave him that giant contract. Yep. I don't know if that's true, but if it is true, then it's not a good thing. And it points to why Le'Veon Bell probably shouldn't get paid very much because giving money to

giving a lot of money to players in that position is a dangerous, dangerous thing. As you watched a young quarterback completely self-combust in the Super Bowl and make decisions a second late and just kind of kill his team, did you have a flash forward moment to Mitch Trubisky

in one of the next three Super Bowls re-experiencing the same thing? You have to. You have to sit there and say, if your quarterback isn't good enough, none of the rest of this matters. And that's why when I sit and just think about the bears and everyone's like, yeah, you know what the defense and dah, dah, dah, dah, and all this. And you know, they don't have any money to spend in free agency and how can they get any better? It's like,

it doesn't matter if the quarterback doesn't get better. The rest of this is totally irrelevant. And that is, it's not a complicated thing and it's not that interesting to say, but I really do feel like that's kind of where we are with the NFL. I mean, Nick Foles, was he a backup last year? Yes. But did he just get lit on fire for two weeks? Also? Yes. He was very good. You need your quarterback to be good to win in those games, because even if you get close, eventually that guy is going to sabotage you how hard are you going to laugh when somebody gives 70 million dollars to tevin coleman i see i don't know if that's going to happen because it's the same thing as we're seeing with levion bell like why would a team give tevin coleman a monster contract why does anybody do

anything i know i know but i just think at back, it's become harder and harder to justify. And with Tevin Coleman, it's not as if you're selling to your fan base. Look, we just got Tevin Coleman. On that side of it, it's much easier to sell Le'Veon Bell to your ownership than it is to sell Tevin Coleman. I'm looking. Does Miami have a first-round

pick this year? They're 13. Yes. I was thinking they could be a Josh Rosen. Oh was thinking they could be a Josh Rosen. Oh, they absolutely should be a Josh Rosen Miami's 48. They have 48 too. I don't know

what they're going to do. I mean, I assume they're going to cut to Anahill and then they're one of the teams that needs a quarterback very quickly as well. Them, Washington, and that's really it right now.

I have two more questions for you and then you have to go tape House of Carps. First of all, who is your favorite available free agent? The one, as I said earlier, you're one of the biggest football nerds I know. And you tend to gravitate towards certain players. They're usually 360-pound offensive linemen.

Sometimes they're nose tackles. Occasionally, maybe an edge rusher. Who is your favorite free agent? Who is hitting a 10 out of 10 on the maze scale right now? I love Trey Flowers. I mean, I wrote about him coming into the Super Bowl. You motherfucker.

You just told me we shouldn't franchise tag him. Now you love Trey Flowers? I don't think there's... If I was another team, I would pay Trey Flowers. But I know Belichick isn't going to. If I'm the Colts

or a team like that, I absolutely would give him the money because I think he's really good. He's the type of guy. It was like Cleus Campbell when he was in Arizona. The way they used him, he was never going to get 15 sacks. He was lining up inside a lot. He was asked to do a bunch of different things on the interior. And then as soon as he comes a defensive end for Jacksonville, he's getting 13 sacks a

year. I think the Trey Flowers might be that kind of player. I think used in a slightly different way in a slightly different role. He could be a guy that warrants a 16, $17 million a year contract. I just think he does every little thing, right? I mean, he's the perfect Patriots defensive player in a lot of ways. He just doesn't play. He doesn't play a position.

They value outside of that. I mean, like, if you can get Earl Thomas, that's pretty awesome. It's a weird free agent class. There aren't that many big names, but I do think a lot of these defensive players are going to make teams better, whether it's Landon Collins, Earl Thomas, Tyron Matthew.

I mean, these dudes can play. So side question. So I guess I have three questions. This is the second one. What free agent would the Patriots could the Patriots sign in the next three weeks that you would just be bummed out? Golden Tate.

Oh. Now Kyle's just jostled in his seat. I fucking love Golden Tate. You know what he'd be better than? Everybody who was our second receiver last year. All the guys who were just blanketed by everybody else's cornerback.

Yeah, I'm in on Golden Tate. Last question, because I know you're watching the you went to the combine. I know you're at the stage where you're watching YouTube clips of random offensive linemen. Probably a little too much. It's weird.

It's almost a borderline fetish of you watching offensive linemen just blowing people off the line. I watch all positions equally. Nah, it's a little bit of a fetish. I just like offensive linemen more than the average person. Who's that dude on the Colts? Quentin Nelson? You've definitely spent over 100 hours watching Quentin Nelson tape.

Who is your favorite... As everyone should! Who is your favorite guy in the draft for offensive? Honestly, I have not watched that many guys, but the one guy that keeps jumping out, because free agency happens first. It's like the weird thing about the NFL calendar is that we go to the combine

and then free agency happens like five days later. But Bradbury, the NC State center, everyone seems to love him. And I just think he's one of those guys from everything I've heard, Garrett Bradbury, the NC State center, everyone seems to love him. And I just think he's one of those guys from everything I've heard, Garrett Bradbury, that's just going to get drafted by a team and be a 10-year starter in the NFL. And I just love players like that. I think that dudes like Travis Frederick, players of that ilk are really good investments. And I think that a team like the Rams or the Panthers,

somebody like that is going to draft that guy in the first round and be very happy about it. It's funny how it's always like a center or a safety. I remember the year Ed Reid got drafted. I can't remember where he went in the draft, but everybody agreed that he was one of the best two or three players in the draft, but he went eighth or 10th or whatever. And it was just clear immediately that guy was going to be awesome for 10 years. And it's funny how people never just kind of want to take that person in the top three, but we all know the guy's going to be awesome. So you think the center is going to be that guy this year? He just seems really safe. And then the linebackers, I mean, Devin White from LSU, everyone just thinks it's going to be somebody you can drop in. He'll play forever. I just like players like that, where you just feel really good about who they're going to be somebody you can drop in. He'll play forever. I just like players like that where you just feel really good about who

they're going to be. And that's why it was funny last year when Quentin Nelson went sixth and everyone was like, God, that's too high for a guard, everything else. And then you watch Quentin Nelson play. It's like,

okay, he's one of the best five guards in the league already. He's going to be on our team for 12 years. Yeah. We all knew that going in. Um, yeah. Colts. Would that be your kind of

that that's kind of the x-factor team it feels like heading into free agency because they have like 700 million dollars to spend and a quarterback that nearly brought you to tears and joy a couple times last year because you really missed him so much it's fun to have him back he's a

player he's he seems like a good guy. The league is better with him in it. They have $107 million in space. They have an extra top 35 pick from the Jets. In my opinion, they're the team that holds the cards in all of this. And they actually have a competent GM,

which they did not have before. Arguably, the best GM of the last year. I mean, what he's done is remarkable. The position that they're in and how quickly he's turned that around, it's hard to overstate how impressive it is. Mays, we can listen to you on The Ringer NFL Show

and we can read you on theringer.com and we might even let you on a Rewatchables podcast this year. I'm still sorting out my phones. Wow, look at that. I'm so excited about not being on one. You did leave us. I mean, you literally left.

You were here and then you left. I hope people understand that I have watched every one of these movies like 20 times. This is my favorite idea for a podcast ever. I listen to every single one of them. And my continued punishment for leaving Los Angeles three and a half years ago is that I'm not allowed on the rewatchables.

Well, it hurt my feelings and it continues to hurt my feelings. Robert Mays. I just want people to know. Robert Mays, thanks for being on. Thanks, buddy. Let's take a break to talk about Allbirds. They're dedicated to making stylish, comfortable footwear using premium natural materials designed for life's everyday adventures like the Allbirds Wool Runners, which are comfy shoes made from wool.

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mutually exclusive. Head to allbirds.com. Get your own very own, get your own, get your very own, your very own, own pair of soft and cozy wool runners. All right, let's call Alan Sepulow. All right, on the line right now, one of our OG guests from way back in the day in the BS Report, the famed TV critic, Alan Sepinwall, now at Rolling Stone, wrote The Sopranos Sessions, which I watched the entire Sopranos in five weeks, 86 episodes while reading the book along. I highly recommend the experience. It was great. Thank you for writing that book.

I enjoyed watching the show and reading it. So thanks. Well, I'm glad you liked it. That was the whole goal was to get people watching and talking about Sopranos again. I want to talk about it in a second, but we got to talk about Luke Perry first. Died at 52, out of nowhere, shocking. And then obviously read all the pieces, including yours over the last couple

of days and was kind of trying to figure out how to put this career in perspective that was weirdly influential and just captured a time of television when a show like Beverly Hills 90210, which I obviously put in my columns a bunch of times and referenced and talked about, but really had a cultural impact. And I wonder now like shows, you know, like 13 Reasons Why and Stranger Things and things like that. I think they have the same impact,

but it's more of a binge watch fast, one, two week type of thing. This show was, they did 32 episodes one year and it was just in your life and it was this event on Monday nights and people getting together and it got me thinking how that just feels like it was a million years ago.

What was your reaction? I was really thrown by it. I was in the same graduating class as the kids from West Beverly when the show debuted. And so, you know, everyone I knew was watching it. I grew a very unfortunate pair of sideburns that first year, like every other guy I knew. So, I mean, that was, it was a thing. And the funny thing is high school shows had been out of favor for a really long time.

And that year, I think there were five or six of them, including like the Ferris Bueller, Ben Offit, Jennifer Aniston, and a couple of others. And everyone was completely dismissive of 90210. And that became the huge hit. And I would argue that you wouldn't have the WB and now the CW and like pretty much the last 20, 30 years of team shows. It was hugely influential in that way.

Yeah, and you think about the biggest shows in the 90s, right? last 20, 30 years of team shows. It was hugely influential in that way. Yeah. And you think about the biggest shows in the 90s, right? So the go-to ones would be Seinfeld and Friends and ER. I think NYPD Blue. The shows that just pushed boundaries, took TV to maybe a place that hadn't totally gone to yet or reinvented some format that used to work and nobody was doing it anymore. And it's weird to think that 90210 was one of those shows,

but I really feel like it was. I think there was this void of, you know, kind of that teen drama soap opera-y kind of show that had just kind of gone away and was a big thing when we were growing up with Dynasty and Knot's Landing and all those types of shows. But those shows were about adults. That was the funny thing. There was this belief that teenagers either weren't watching TV or they didn't want to

watch shows about teenagers. They wanted to see the grown-ups. And then along came this and along came Dylan McKay. And suddenly it was a phenomenon and the light bulb went off. And he was also, you know, it was the perfect match of character and actor. And it was this guy that, you know, we had heard as kids and as in high school and college, you'd always hear about like James Dean and people like that, these heartthrobs and these bad boys with the heart of gold.

I hadn't really seen that in TV that much or to, to, to the maximum kind of potential of it. And then he came in and now he's, he's dating Brenda and Brenda's dad doesn't like him. And, but meanwhile, he has this whole backstory and his dad is in jail and he's this rich kid,

but he actually, he is a good guy. There was just all these layers to it. And they actually created somebody that I felt like this, I like this guy. He's a good guy, which is also a really hard thing to do. And I think in the past 25 years, there have been a lot of TV shows that have tried to recreate Dylan McKay in all these different ways. It is now kind of a go-to character,

and there's all these variations of it. But do you feel like he was a prototype of it? He was, and the reason it's so hard to duplicate him is because all the time you have these characters who you're told are cool. Dylan was cool. A lot of these guys, the shows and the actors are just trying really hard.

You don't necessarily want to put Perry on a par with James Dean or somebody like that, but just in terms of genuinely cool, seeming like that guy, seeming utterly believable, like everyone would be drawn to him, that he was that magnetic, that seemed absolutely genuine. And that's a hard thing to copy because not everybody has that. And they had the great rivalry slash friendship with Brandon, Jason Priestley. And both of those guys ascend and become super famous.

And we know they became super famous, not just because of the ratings of the show. Both of them hosted SNL within a year of each other during a really, really, really esteemed stretch of SNL where you still had Phil Hartman there and you had Mike Myers. And I think Dana Carvey was in one of the things. When Jason Priestley hosted, and he hosted before Luke Perry, Dana Carvey did a Dylan impersonation that I still think is like one of the 20 best impersonations in the history of the show.

Like it's like out of control how good it is. But they were just kind of in the pop culture zeitgeist. And I think what that show was able to do, at least for, I don't know, five years, was it really felt relevant. Like you felt like somebody felt like left out if they weren't watching it. You know, the conversations were out if they weren't watching it, you know, the conversations were, were happening and you weren't included. Like you almost had, people were watching it just because they didn't want to be left out. And that's another thing that I wonder if that exists anymore. TV is so niche oriented now and there's just these little

pockets and people love their shows and they talk, but you know, I don't know what's going on with 90% of the shows right now. And then back in the nineties, that was not the case. Yeah. No, because you're doing it on your schedule and maybe for like, you know, a week and a half, everyone's talking about the same thing, but then you move on to something else. And you know, when game of Thrones ends in a couple of months, that may be it for water cooler TV. Yeah. It's sobering.

It really might be the last show that I feel like everybody at least has an opinion on. Yep, and everyone's watching it roughly the same time. Yeah, now even you have, from a binge watch standpoint, there was so much time between last season and this season that any last person who is ever going to watch this show is trying to catch up for now.

It's funny though, binge watching Game of Thrones versus binge watching The Sopranos is a totally different animal. Game of Thrones is so dense and rich. The Sopranos is unbelievable to binge watch. You can literally bang out four a night and they just, you cruise through them. It is great.

I would have trouble banging out four Game of Thrones a night and they just, you cruise through them. It was great. I would have trouble banging out four Game of Thrones a night, 90210. You could bang out 20 a day. You just have it on the background while you're doing nine other things, which is something I used to do. You know, when Dylan left 90210, I felt like that was kind of a seminal moment too. I don't remember, it wasn't something that happened a lot in the annals of TV history. Like Shelley Long left Cheers. Archie Bunker's wife left All in the Family. Radar left MASH.

It was always like career suicide to do it. And when he did it, when Luke Perry left, it felt like, man, what are you going to do? But his career after that was interesting. He did all these, did movies and he did, he was on Oz and tried all these different things. And then eventually they just lured him back with a wad of cash. But I always thought like the way he approached his career was pretty unique. What did you think?

I think he was sensible about it. He understood that they had taken Dylan as far as he could go. You know, by the time the other kids are off in college, he's running around trying to reclaim his fortune with the help of a mercenary and all that. It just didn't really fit on the show anymore. And he recognized that. There was nowhere to go but down if he had stayed. And he kept working. He, you know, by all accounts, was a really nice guy, very sensible, never got a huge head, despite how ridiculously famous he was. And he worked really steadily. You know, everybody else was about to be involved in this, like, Curb Your Enthusiasm-esque revival that they're planning. But he wasn't doing it because he had a day job on Riverdale.

He was the one who was still working. And now I can't even imagine how they're going to do it without it seeming really sad and in poor taste. Yeah. I had him on a podcast in 2013 and I had had Brian Austin Green on a year before and very carefully kept steering it to not, oh, to a note,

which he was really happy to talk about. And Luke Perry, it was much more of but the thing that was that i brought up in that podcast when i worked on jimmy kimmel show the first year luke perry was on and we had him in the green room he was such a good guy i was talking to him with uh tony barbieri who's one of the writers and i fanboyed out for like two minutes he was it was so he was such a good sport about it and then he went on monica lewinsky was guest host. And we had had this whole three days of Monica Lewinsky, where she was the guest host, but we weren't guest co-host, but we weren't allowed to mention Bill Clinton. And at that point of the show, we were so desperate for any sort of headlines, attention, whatever. They actually agreed to that.

So poor Jimmy had to do the show every night and couldn't mention Bill Clinton and had to mention like her bracelets and all this stuff and kind of dance around it. So the last day, the last night we had was the night Luke Perry was on and he comes out and does like five minutes and he's sitting next to Monica Lewinsky. And at some point he turns over, he looks over and he goes, yeah, I was, I've always thought you were really cute since that Bill Clinton thing. And it was like, it was like this balloon just popped and then Jimmy was so delighted. And then all of a sudden we could talk about Bill Clinton. It was just like, it was just classic, but he was a really good sport and a good guy about all that stuff. The Dylan drinking story arc,

when Dylan fell off the wagon after his family stole money from him. Still to me, one of the great, what is it? Like Sopranos season three and Dylan's drinking. Those are the best two stretches ever in TV history. What would you, is it 1A, 1B for you? I don't know if my scale is quite the same as yours on that bill, but that was a classic for sure. He just went off the rails.

Kyle, did you ever see that? I got to make Kyle watch those seven episodes. I've not watched 902 and 902. Dylan goes off the rails in one of the greatest ways that's happened. Well, anyway, RIP Luke Perry. Very bummed out. And I really felt like he was this important television character, but hadn't really thought about it until this happened,

which is a bummer. But sometimes that's the way it works. He made the show. He wasn't in the first couple of episodes, the pilot. And I think that's one of the reasons everyone was so dismissive of it. And then as soon as he turned up, it was like magic. Now I watch some of these shows thinking like the dad instead of the younger characters, because now I'm a dad, obviously.

Yeah. And it's funny. I don't, you know, the great James Eckhouse. I don't call him James Eckhouse. I call him the great James Eckhouse who played Brenda's dad. Dylan dating his daughter and then, you know, they go to Mexico at one point. I would have been, if somebody that might be going ape shit, if somebody took my daughter to Mexico.

So I might have to watch this again because I, maybe I'm, maybe I held Dylan McKay in too high esteem. You don't take somebody's 16 year old daughter to Mexico. Come on, Kyle. Sorry. Let's talk about Tony Soprano. Let's take a quick break to talk about Robinhood. It's an investing app that lets you buy and sell stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptos all commission-free. While other brokerages charge up to $10 for every trade, Robinhood doesn't charge any commission fees, so you can trade stocks and

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All you have to do is sign up at Simmons.Robinhood.com. Once again, Simmons.Robinhood.com. So this is another iconic character that created a new archetype, shall we say, the anti-hero, which is not an original point. And people have made that point many times. It struck me as I rewatched this entire show, just how many horrible things he did in it and how I still liked him in the end. And it's like Breaking Bad is the classic just descent into somebody becoming a bad

guy. But Tony, episode to episode, would just do one horrible thing in each one. And I keep coming back to the bouncer, not the bouncer, the bartender at Bada Bing. What's that guy's name? Georgie. Over the course of 86 episodes, Tony just attacks him like seven times, just bashing the phone against his head. And he just was not a great guy. And I really think that the reason we loved him so much was how great Gandolfini was. And I really wonder what that show is like with anybody else. And the point I want to make is I was staggered by how good Gandolfini was in this show. That was what I just think it, I think it's number one for me all the time for performances.

It's the best. No, I agree. When I, when I went back to rewatch it to write the book, you know, I had sort of felt like, all right,

well, he's, he's great, but you know, Cranston was great. Ham was great. Elizabeth Moss was great. There's sort of,

you know, we're in this golden age and it was like, no, he's, he's the great. Ham was great. Elizabeth Moss was great. There's sort of, you know, we're in this golden age. And I was like, no, he's, he's the best. It's amazing how many different moments where he's like doing nothing. You know, he's in the car,

he's singing along to the radio and it's riveting just because it's him. Right. And you know, let's say like when he shows up at the, uh, the Russian call girl, whatever you call her apartment in the, in the,

uh, Johnard is there. Kate Nelfini just beats him up with his belt, takes his belt off and just whips the guy. No, that's Zellman. It's Peter Rieger who he whips with the belt. Oh, Peter Rieger, sorry. Just whips the guy with his belt and it's fucking brutal. There's just nobody like that. I was also struck by how funny the show was. And I don't think the Sopranos gets enough credit

for how fucking funny it was and how like funny the Pine Barrens episode is, which is always the show that's mentioned as like the Waterside show. I actually disagree because it's got the whole subplot of I think, Carmella and Furio. There's some really

dead spots that aren't them and the Pine Barrens. The Pine Barrens part's unbelievable. I actually thought the peak of the show was the last two episodes of season five. Oh, those are tremendous. Yeah, when they kill Adriana and then when they kill Tonyana. Yeah. Tony B.

And sorry, I'm not doing spoiler alerts because the show happened 13 years ago, but the combo, the Adriana episode, and I forgot how amazing she was. Dre De Matteo, especially season five, which she won an Emmy for.

She's out of control that season, but that episode and just Silvio, just the switch turning and he just becomes evil. And then Buscemi, the next episode. To me, that's the peak of the show. I think you could maybe say that season three has the most going on. What would you say was the apex mountain of this show I mean

I still really love the first season just because Livia is one of my favorite characters and the idea of Tony's mom

trying to kill him seems like kind of the purest distillation of the idea of the show you know family versus family I love a lot of what happens in the

final season too season five is really great though and that's the one that those two episodes like a lot of people happens in the final season two. Season five is really great, though, and that's the one that those two episodes, like, a lot of people just wanted The Sopranos to be this straightforward mob show. Like, who's going to get whacked? What move is Tony going to make?

And for the most part, the show wasn't interested in that. It would do it kind of occasionally, but an episode like Long Term Parking, which is the Adriana one, that's pretty much just straightforward mob stuff, and it's amazing. Like, if they had just done one, that's pretty much just straightforward mob stuff. And it's amazing. Like if they had just done that, it would have been incredible. It just had a lot of other things on its mind too.

You know, watching it and I had only watched it when I watched it in the last decade. So I didn't really remember a lot and watching season four, my wife was falling asleep during half of them. And I was like, man, the season four is just really not that good. Like it had a couple good episodes, but for the most part felt really disjointed. And it was interesting. You did in your book, you did, you know, just a series of long form interviews with David Chase, the guy who created the Sopranos. And even he admits that season four, they kind of lost the steering wheel a little bit, which I thought was really fascinating for him to reveal that. Were you surprised by that?

No, because you could tell just watching it and you could see like towards the end, like every episode had five or six credited writers, which is usually only a thing that happens if there's a real scramble there. And that was the first one I went up covering at the Star Ledger. And I felt like, oh, I'd been handed this lemon. Like, you know, here I get the Sopranos right when it's going off the cliff. But then that season has one of the best finales. And then season five, you know, from there on, the show was great again. It has, season four has, isn't that the episode where Dr. Melfi gets assaulted? No, that's in season three.

Oh, that's season three. So season four had Pine Barrens and... No, that's also season three. Oh, shit's season three. So season four had Pine Barrens and... No, that's also season three. Oh, shit. So what was in season four? Ralphie gets his head cut off. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Season four is mainly Carmella flirting with Furio,

but the big episode is Ralphie gets his head chopped off. Yeah, season three was... Man, that was a really good one. Was that Annabelle Siura too? Was that season three? Yep, yep, Gloria. It's hard to remember the seasons when you watch 86 in four and Yep. Gloria. It's hard to remember the seasons when you watch 86 in four and a half weeks.

It's hard to remember which, what was, what episode was in which part. I was struck re-watching how good the last season was. It's one of the best

closing stretches ever. Yeah. And I don't know why I didn't totally remember that, but I think part of it was just being jaded by the complicated feelings about the season finale. But holy fucking shit.

I mean, it's basically split into two seasons, which you explain in your book, that they had to do for contractually pretend it was all one season. But it's really two seasons. Yep. And those last, is it six or seven to end it? Seven, right? It's seven episodes, I think. Possibly nine. If you can get past poor Robert Eiler,

who's the Marco Ravironi of this whole show and probably deserves his own podcast at this point. A lot of really high usage rate for Robert Eiler in that last season that led the last 20 episodes really just in it it felt like Chase was trying to explore some sort of when a father gets disappointed

by his son type of theme but really really explored it and didn't really have the right actor for it but if you get past that I thought it was incredible and that leads me to the ending which now that it's been 13 years

now that I know what's going to happen now that I know my cable didn't go out and now that I just experienced the whole show from start to finish again the ending's amazing I'm actually all in on the ending I am a fucking full Kool-Aid drinker of the ending.

It's really good. It actually is exactly how it should have ended. It's kind of perfect. How many people feel this way? I definitely do impress for the book. I've encountered a lot of people who have done a 180 like you on the ending where they were mad at the time and now like it. Not everybody. Some people are still upset, but more often than not, people seem to like, you know, that

it ended that way. And you thought, I can't, you wrote it with bad solar sites. One of you was convinced that he died. That was you, right? No, that's, it's more of a joke. I think like it's easier to see the argument, oh, that he died, than I did back when it aired 12, 13 years ago. But I think it's ambiguous. We talk about that at length.

I think the scene is about death, but you don't actually see him die, and you can either decide or not decide that he gets killed there. I think he 100% died after watching the show and the clues that he sprinkled in. And especially the Bobby Bacala on the boat scene, when they like, what do you think happens when you get whacked? Do you think you hear it? And I think everything goes back. Then he calls back to it in the second to last episode. Like he clearly was trying to tell us, hey, get ready.

This is going to happen. That's how I feel. I don't know if I'm right, but that's my feeling. No, and it's, it's not an unreasonable thing. And there's so many clues and just so many like,

uh, hints about death sprinkled throughout that episode, throughout that season. Like you definitely want to be watching it and feel, he wants you to be watching it and feeling like, Oh, Tony could die at any moment. Life is so fragile. Life is so fragile.

Life is so precious. We walk through this world and you never know when it's going to happen. And maybe this is it for him. It's really well constructed and really well done. And it's funny watching all that in a row. It starts affecting your behavior. I definitely felt like I was a little more aggro during those four weeks. Like something wasn't

working out at the ringer and I just wanted to whack the person. I also the funniest thing that I started doing at my house was the oh! That whole thing like when somebody's insulted or a joke or like

Bill, you're finally going to tape your podcast today, huh? Oh, like one of the, it's just the way those guys interacted was so unique. And you know, my favorite scenes are just them at the Bing or playing cards or just busting each other's balls or taking something personally. The worst scenes, you're going to be unhappy to hear this. There might've been some fast forwarding during some of the Dr. Melfi scenes for me. I'm shocked to hear you say this, Bill, after all the time I've known you.

Shocked. It wasn't a pure 86 episode run. It probably, I probably chopped maybe 4% of it just by being like, you know what, not really in the mood for another weird Dr. Melfi scene.

That character didn't work for me 13, 20 years ago. And I don't know. You're higher on Dr. Melfi though. And I was higher this time than I was back in the day. I used to think that Lorraine Bracco was kind of the weak link of the major cast members because she would seem stiff a lot of the time. And when I went back and watched it again for the book, it seemed more like,

no, that's deliberate. Like she's uncomfortable being around this guy a lot. And there are moments when she's not, and she was, she's really great. Those, I guess the biggest flaw of this show.

And if you know the Mount Rushmore for me, which has five shows on it, all of them have flaws. Um, the, the, the flaw for this show is, is the supporting actors.

Some of the acting is just not good. It's just not, it's, there's some really kind of subpar actors. So when somebody like Buscemi or Joe Panigliano, Panigliano or Frank Vincent, guys like that come in that are like real actors who really know what the fuck they're doing.

It stands out and maybe he intended it to be that way. But I look at somebody like Bobby Bacala, who actually got better by the last season, was actually pretty good. But those first couple of seasons, like he's just bad. And over and over again, there's people in these parts that are actually half-important parts

and they're just not actors. There's definitely people who had to veer out of their lane more than they should have just because other characters got killed off and they got promoted further up on the bench than they probably should have. Even somebody like Steve Van Zandt works almost entirely just as comic relief.

And if you try to do more with him, it's problematic. But then you have a scene like him with Adriana and it's terrifying. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. It was an amazing experience to rewatch it. I think it's available. It's on HBO now, obviously, but I think it's also on Amazon Prime. And now I'm thinking about the next binge watch.

There's been rumors of the Simmons family maybe plowing through Mad Men. Just rumors right now. I've heard that's a good show, Bill. There's been whispers that we might be plowing through all of those. And I just got to decide. It's a little, it's got a little,

I'd be interested to see how many how many a night you could watch a madman it feels like two would be the max what do you think well i mean madman's a little less pulpy than sopranos with sopranos there's always some kind of what's going to happen next and who's going to get killed element to it that can pull you along even though the episodes i think are really dense and sort of laden with meaning in the same way that Mad Men is. You know, you could, you'd certainly go back and rewatch Breaking Bad faster than I expect you would Mad Men. Yeah.

And Breaking Bad, definitely. But I feel like that was only like five, six years ago though. I feel like I just did that. I, I, I'm eyeing The Wire as well. Because in the power rankings right now, The Wire was one heading into the Sopranos binge, but now I think Sopranos might be back to the one spot again for me. I think it might be good. Well, so now you've got to test it out, I think.

I think it's Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and then Thrones fifth for the five show Mount Rushmore. That's how I'd go right now. What would you do for your five? Rent those five. It would be Sopranos, Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Deadwood. That's my fifth. Deadwood?

Nice. So what'd you bump out? I'd bump out Game of Thrones. Man. Easily. I mean, I like Game of Thrones a lot, but I don't think it's in the class of any of those. I'm torn on it because the best Game of Thrones episodes,

like the peak Game of Thrones is just some of the greatest TV I've ever seen in my life. Like what was the episode when Tyrion takes over the battle from Joffrey, that fucking loser? Blackwater. Blackwater. I just remember watching that for the first time and just being

just staggered by it. Same thing for Red Wedding. Like, some of the iconic shows, like, I really did, the best version of that show is still as good

as I've ever seen on television. But I think the totality of it, I don't know. It's very uneven and it's more sort of like, it's a show better served

to like watch clips on YouTube than it is to go back and rewatch whole episodes or whole seasons, I think. Yeah. It's great in moments for sure. And you feel like Lost has kind of fallen out of this argument? I don't know that Lost was ever in the argument of like, you know, top five of all time. I think in our TV book that Matt and I did, it was somewhere in the twenties. No, I didn't, I didn't mean the,

I didn't mean the, uh, the totality of the show, but just like the best possible episode of a show. Oh man. The best possible episode of lost is pretty high up there. Like the constant and a couple of the other ones are really amazing. Um,

but you know, that's a very uneven show for sure. Yeah. Lost was like one of those basketball players that could have 47 one night and then like seven the next night. Just bounce around. Is there any show right now that's out there that you feel like even has a chance

to be discussed as reverentially or no? I mean, I think Atlanta could in terms of things that are still airing right now. That has a possibility. But again, it's sort of like, how many people are watching Atlanta? How many people are watching BoJack Horseman as opposed to how many people were watching Sopranos back when it was on, or how many people are watching Thrones right now? Can I tell you the most important show for my kids right now? And you're going to think I'm a bad parent. And I don't care. I will not. I will never judge a parent for what their kids

watch. My kids love Big Mouth and it's completely inappropriate and they shouldn't be watching it. I found out they were watching it after they had already watched like 18 of them. Now it's like I'm in no man's land with it because if you tell kids not to

watch something, it's going to make them watch it even more and I want my kids to have a sense of humor. They think that show is absolutely amazing. And I'm a bad parent, I think, for letting them watch it. I don't know. I mean, I've had long conversations about this with Nick Kroll. You know, he said like they didn't intend for kids to watch it, but they found a lot of them have. And it sort of has prompted good conversations with their parents about it. So I guess in that respect, it's okay. My kids have not watched it. And I think if I tried to show it to them, my wife would kick me out of the house,

but you know, it's a really good and empathetic show. So that you're not a bad parent for them having seen it, Bill. We had a soccer tournament this weekend where we all had to stay over at this hotel in Temecula, which is two hours from LA. And, um, all the parents were in the lobby. We were all having drinks and 10 of the kids were in my room. And I went back to my room to get something. And it was like a record scratch followed by multiple kids going, Zoe, turn it off,

turn it off. But she couldn't find the button. And then I hear on the TV, one of the characters goes, you're a fucking bitch. And I'm like, what are you guys and they were watching Big Mouth and they were mortified and then they're like don't tell anyone don't tell

don't tell our parents don't and I'm like alright guys I got you I'm not going to talk about this now I'm just going to talk about it on my podcast later for a million people but yeah so Big Mouth has penetrated the don't tell our parents we're watching this Vortex

uh are you what you what you're feeling before we go on uh these last six episodes of Game of Thrones I'm really

gonna be interested to see how it works because it sounds like every episode's gonna be 80 or 90 minutes long which is usually not good but they've got

so much story to cover and so many characters to deal with uh and they work on a scale that no other show ever has so uh I'm hopeful usually not good, but they've got so much story to cover and so many characters to deal with. And they work on a scale that no other show ever has. So I'm hopeful, but I don't know yet. I didn't,

I didn't really love the last season. So, but it's also been gone for two years. So I'm excited to be back in this world for a little bit. I cannot figure out why they're doing this movie treatment of these episodes. And what, what is, unless there's some sort of contractual thing that I don't totally understand,

but just why not just do 10 one hour episodes? It's very strange. Like for years, they insisted that they didn't want to do episodes longer than 50 minutes, even though they like shot much more material, if I'm remembering right, than they were using.

And so all of a sudden at the end, they're kind of flipping it. They're going almost double that. I don't know the answer. Is your book doing well? People like it? Yeah, the book's doing well. It's been doing almost too well

in that we keep selling out the printings, but it's still in stock at Amazon right now. And it's going to be a new big printing in about a week. And so if you don't want to order from Amazon and you want to wait, it should be available everywhere else again, you know, within a week. And so if you don't want to order from Amazon and you want to wait, it should be available everywhere else again, you know, within a week or so. So your publisher needs to get their shit together is what you're telling me.

Demand has vastly exceeded supply. I've written two books and both times that happened. And it was really frustrating the second time because we had this actual real instant of this happening where there's proof and like, here's what's going to happen. And here's why we have to print this many books. And they still didn't. And then it happened again. And I almost lost my mind. I hope all those emails have been destroyed from 2009 that I wrote angrily to everybody. We went to a thing in Washington and we had like,

it was like 1200 people there and they had 200 books. And this was after I had sent a hundred emails like, Hey, Washington, there's a lot of fans there. Like we've got to, got to make sure we're prepared. And we had 200 books. It was great. The sense I've gotten is it's more on the end of the distributors, like Barnes and Noble vastly under-ordered it, for instance. Yeah, because they don't want to get stuck with them. They're catching up.

Yeah, they're always going to play it safe. But this was a really good idea for a book. Do you have a next idea for a book? There's some things that I'm talking about and that Matt and I are talking about, but nothing that either of us can announce quite yet. What about the 90210 sessions? I do have one good 90210 story, not related to Dylan,

but a few years back, I wound up at like guest lecturing at a UCLA class taught by Charles Rosin, who was, you know, Oh, that guy's amazing. Yeah. Yep. He was the David Chase of 90210.

And I agreed to do it on one condition, which is, and this is like hardcore 90210 nerdery here, which is they repeated their sophomore year or they repeated their junior year or whatever because they're juniors in the first year. And then they go off to the summer to work at the beach club. They come back and they're still juniors and then they're seniors. And I wanted to know what happened. And Robin said, all right, you come to your lecture, my class,

I will tell you. And at the very end of it, he said, all right, what it was, was Jason Priestley felt embarrassed to be playing a high school sophomore. We intended for the kids to be sophomores. And he's like,

no, I'm not going to do that. And so there's the episode where, where Brendan is dating the single mom for an episode. And there's supposed to be a line where he says, I'm only a sophomore. And he says, I'm only a junior. And he would not do a take where he said, I'm only a sophomore. And so the kids all went up repeating their junior year because of that. That's just ludicrous. I can't believe that. You know what else was ludicrous? Casting Gabriel Carteras as a high school sophomore when she was 30

that was the era when we did stuff like this and we had no internet, check and balances you could just kind of do whatever you wanted we knew, it was a running joke that was the other thing we should have mentioned with 90210 was it was all pre-internet

so we all had the same jokes and whatever about the show, but nobody knew that anybody else had the same jokes. So all the stuff that you made fun of in your little groups, everybody else was too, but you hadn't really no idea that that was happening. It was simpler times. Simpler times, Alan Sepinwall.

This was fun. Thank you, as always, for coming on. And I'm excited for your next book. Anytime, Bill. My pleasure. All right. All right. Thanks to ZipCruiter.

Don't forget to go to zipcruiter.com slash BS. Thanks to Robert Mays and Alan Sepinwall. Thanks to Mercari, the selling app that makes it fast and easy to sell almost anything. Take a few picks at a description. Boom. Your item is listed. Buyers in all 50 states. Everything ships easily.

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